Top 500 Steven Erikson Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.”

— Steven Erikson

352. “To love in absence is to float on ever still waters. No sudden currents, no treacherous tides, no possibility of drowning.”

— Steven Erikson

353. “The simple ones aren’t simple. The broken ones aren’t broken. They are rearranged.”

— Steven Erikson

354. “Besides, captain, have you no interest in seeing Lord Henarald’s expression when he learns that my master seeks to commission a sword?’ Galar Baras’s head snapped round in shock.”

— Steven Erikson

355. “The laws are not what they seem. Order is an illusion. It hides its lies in your very eyes, deceiving all they see. Because to see is to change that which is seen. No, none of us will ever see true. We cannot. It is impossible. I give you a life without answers, my children.”

— Steven Erikson

356. “Even a man who has lived a life of sorrows will ask for one more day.”

— Steven Erikson

357. “Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do. Draconus.”

— Steven Erikson

358. “Corporal Clasp crawled up beside him. ‘That’s one of those Fuckeral’s, isn’t it?”

— Steven Erikson

359. “Heed the lesson there, son.” “What lesson?” “Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.” “I want to be a soldier. A hero.” “You’ll grow out of it.”

— Steven Erikson

360. “The failing was that it was so easily won, and therefore became a thing of little worth for the recipient. Could no one see the hurt she felt, each and every time she was cast aside, sorely used, battered by rejection? Did they think she welcomed such feelings, the crushing despond of seeing the paucity of her worth?”

— Steven Erikson

361. “Evading responsibility was a proclivity of the human species, it seemed.”

— Steven Erikson

362. “Ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value.”

— Steven Erikson

363. “He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.”

— Steven Erikson

364. “Young? He’d hear his own harsh, pained laugh. Oh, no, not this lass. She’s old. She walked under a blood-red moon in the dawn of time, did this one. Her face is the face of all that cannot be fathomed, and she’s looking you in the eye, Whiskeyjack, and you’ll never know what she’s thinking.”

— Steven Erikson

365. “Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith.”

— Steven Erikson

366. “I am not empty inside. I am not at peace.’ The word seemed to startle him. ‘Peace? I spoke not of peace. In absence, Korya, there is yearning.’ His strange eyes focused on her. ‘Do you not so yearn?”

— Steven Erikson

367. “Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.”

— Steven Erikson

368. “His dying shriek rose skyward.”

— Steven Erikson

369. “When it is all one can do to simply hold on, then to suffer is to weather a deluge no god can ease.”

— Steven Erikson

370. “Oh, Laseen,” she murmured, tears welling in her eyes, “I know why we fear this Jaghut Tyrant. Because he became human, he became like us, he enslaved, he destroyed, and he did it better than we could.” She lowered her head into her hands. “That’s why we fear.”

— Steven Erikson

371. “And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire.”

— Steven Erikson

372. “I will answer in kind. No act is final. Another inevitably awaits.”

— Steven Erikson

373. “You’ll not have me, Lord, because you can’t.”

— Steven Erikson

374. “I, Borduke of the 6th squad in the 9th Company of the 8th Legion, swear on the downy belly of the Queen of Dreams that the creature before me is a natural, unaltered Birdshit scorpion, and may my father’s ghost remain in its tomb, since the inheritance was mine to lose anyway, right? Dead means you don’t care any more, right? It had better, because if it doesn’t, then I’m doomed to paternal haunting for the rest of my days.”

— Steven Erikson

375. “It seems, captain, that as her power grows, her tolerance diminishes. They are like lodestones, pushing each other away. Does power not grant immunity? Does power not strengthen the armour; does power not find assurance in itself? Can it be that those who hold the most power also know the greatest fear?”

— Steven Erikson

376. “Skintick could not find himself in that future. He did not expect to complete this journey. He was not sure he even wanted to.”

— Steven Erikson

377. “There would always be, he now understood, those for whom violence was righteous. Sudden.”

— Steven Erikson

378. “Something’s nibbling my spleen!”

— Steven Erikson

379. “It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,’ Haut replied. ‘In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.”

— Steven Erikson

380. “The rush of the river was a voice, a presence. Water flowed indifferent to the heave and plunge of the sun, the shrouded moon and the slow spin of the stars. The sound reached them in a song without words, and all effort to grasp its meaning was hopeless, for, like the water itself, one could not grasp hold of sound. The flow was ceaseless and immeasurable and just as stillness did not in fact exist, so neither did true, absolute silence.”

— Steven Erikson

381. “The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.”

— Steven Erikson

382. “The end of the world is announced with a kind word.”

— Steven Erikson

383. “Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet.”

— Steven Erikson

384. “They take us at this moment, these unwavering men and women who presume to rule over us, and but point us in the direction of a weaker victim. This is their game, knowing or not, and as ever the assumption is that we’ll never turn on our masters – so long as an enemy remains within reach of our blunted, frustrated fury. And.”

— Steven Erikson

385. “Sympathy was like water in the desert. Hoarded, reluctantly meted out in the barest of sips. And he, Taralack Veed, could walk a thousand deserts on a single drop.”

— Steven Erikson

386. “He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself – the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom.”

— Steven Erikson

387. “A savage awareness seemed to ride the spinning sand, reaching relentlessly past the folds of their telaban, a thousand abrasive fingers clawing paths across their skin. Loose cloth and rope ends spiked upward, whipping with urgent rhythm. The roar filled the air, filled their skulls.”

— Steven Erikson

388. “They didn’t shelter their own, didn’t feed their own, didn’t heal their own, and yet, in the midst of all this inhumanity, they held themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization.”

— Steven Erikson

389. “The midday heat sapped her strength, and the sluggishness reached through to her thoughts.”

— Steven Erikson

390. “Oh, what a miserable man you are! If you’re wrong and he tries to bite me, I will be very upset with you, Mok. I will lay waste to your loins. I will make your eyes crossed so that everyone who looks at you and your silly mask will not be able to help but laugh. And I will think of other things, too, I assure you.”

— Steven Erikson

391. “I hear Seven Cities natives grow fruit just so they can eat the larvae in them.”

— Steven Erikson

392. “Absence of doubt? No, nothing so egotistic as that. Nimander has plenty of doubts, so many that he’s lost his fear of them. He accepts them as easily as anything else. Is that the secret? Is that the very definition of greatness?”

— Steven Erikson

393. “Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy.”

— Steven Erikson

394. “Too old to dream of perfection, perhaps, she had instead discovered a certain delicious appeal in flaws.”

— Steven Erikson

395. “Secrets have power so long as they remain secrets.”

— Steven Erikson

396. “Just so. And wonder, my friend, is the intellect’s most feared foe. Its path is love, and love is the language of humility. The rational mind would stand over it with a bloodstained sword, and in the empty bleakness of its eyes you will see its triumph.”

— Steven Erikson

397. “I was once told that dreams are worthy things,” said Emancipor, “even if they end up in misery and unending horror.” “Ah, and who told you that?” He shrugged. “My wife.”

— Steven Erikson

398. “People who make up their minds about something never listen to advice – especially when it’s to the contrary.”

— Steven Erikson

399. “And somehow they would be less than human then. The game the mind must play to unleash destruction.”

— Steven Erikson

400. “Eventually every man reaches a point where every memory is unwelcome.”

— Steven Erikson